Fuel issues

[Numptyhill]

Evening,

I have a 1985 1.9 waterbox T25. It has been sat over winter (on the drive) and now won't start... It turns over, but won't fire. I think it's a fuel problem as the fuel line seems empty when I disconnected it from pump.

When I purchased it(year and a half ago), I changed the fuel pump (good quality until) as I had a similar problem then (limped it home on a Beetle fuel pump! Surely the fuel pump won't have gone again? Will it have killed itself if it's been sat doing nothing for 6 months?

This leads me to think it might be crap from the fuel tank/fuel line. It appears the fuel line has been botched from the tank to engine at some point, and I suspect original tank is full of all manor of crap and may have rusted through...

Any ideas? I was pondering about new fuel tank and fuel line to eliminate this as a potential issue...

Have I missed something simpler? Any advice appreciated.

Cheers Simon

[marlinowner]

can be a problem to start when the carb float chamber is empty as the pump doesn't run fast enough to get the petrol moving - try filling the float chamber manually and see if that works to start the engine and get the pump going.

[Numptyhill]

Thank you, I'll give it a try.

[CovKid]

Generally, a couple of capfuls of fuel down carb throat before starting will cause it to burst into life for a few seconds. Repeat until it runs on its own.

[clift_d]

Before you go too far with other stuff it might be worth getting one of the small rubber priming bulbs and pulling a sample of fuel from your tank into a jar. That way you can just check what you've actually got coming through.

[LeeCarey]

Devon camper, CU engine, Weber carb

We had a similar problem where the camper would not start following a run. This plagued us for many months and was finally traced to a vacuum in the petrol tank as the petrol was drawn from the tank. I suspect that this was due to blocked breather tubes.

One thing that you may consider doing is when this happens is to remove the petrol cap and listen for an inrush of air. Also see if the engine will start with no petrol cap on. The way we cured our problem was cut cut out a small section of gasket of the petrol filler cap to allow air to enter (or you could drill a very small hole in the cap). Following this we have had no further problem.

This allowed us to use the van until the breather tubes could be replaced.

I hopes that this helps